Article 370 Case Hearing : Live Updates From Supreme Court [Day 10]

SG Mehta: Maharaja of Patna declared the setting up of a representative constitution making body on 24th Oct 1947.

SG Mehta: Manipur adopted a Constitution which on 26 July 1947 provided for fundamental rights and separation of powers and recognised the Maharaja as its constitutional head.

SG Mehta: As a matter of fact, some of them made their Constitutions and thereafter signed the accession also!

SG Mehta: The draft accession document was common to all. Everyone signed that.

SG Mehta states that Alladi Krishnaswamy Iyer was involved in making the constitution of a region in Madhya Pradesh, Rewa. However, his fee was found too exorbitant and thus, he dropped the drafting.

SG: Eminent counsels of the day were engaged to help the princely states to draw their constitutions.

SG: The argument that J&K had a special status since the beginning which continued till date is factually wrong. The foundation is wrong. 286 states were in the process of framing their Constitution of this period of late 1930s.

SG: Substantial arguments were made that J&K had a special place in the geographical British India because that was the only part which had a constitution in 1939. That is factually incorrect. There were 62 states which had their own Constitutions.

SG Mehta takes the bench through the history of accession.

CJI: You will also have to deal with the argument they raised that sovereignty itself has internal and external components. And internal sovereignty remained.

SG: We are conscious of that. We will also show that means adopted were strictly within constitutional parameters.

CJI: You may also read Section 5 because what is the importance of Accession - that Section 5 gives us. We need to highlight that.